A modern youth, Su Shi, time-travels to become the dissolute second young master of the Great Gan general's mansion. Right at the start, he faces a forced engagement cancellation and establishes a contract to earn four thousand taels a month using a bowl of dark plum soup. Relying on saltpeter ice-making techniques and Tang and Song poetry, he rises from a merchant to become the Jinghu poetry champion, yet gets entangled in Prince Su's fight for the succession and the vortex of military provision embezzlement. Bursting into the wedding hall on his wedding day to create chaos, he investigates the disaster of the leaked border defense map, ultimately subduing the rebellion during Prince Su's military remonstrance by blocking roads with saltpeter and burning food supplies, only to reject the chancellor position and retire with his wife to the banks of the Yudai River.